What Are Buyer Persona And How To Create Them (Part I)

Do you know who your ideal client is? What does he need, what challenges does he have, what social networks does he use and, above all, what can your company do to help?

In Marketing, buyer persona are semi-fictitious representations of our ideal customers. They help us define who this audience is that we want to attract and convert; and above all, they help us to humanize and understand this target audience in greater detail.

Developing your buyer persona will be a fundamental exercise for content creation, product design, lead tracking, sales and any other activity related to customer acquisition and retention.

The key to creating our buyer persona is to ask the right questions to the people who will provide the most useful information for a detailed and representative study.

We have created a guide so that you can start the process of creating your own buyer persona and you will see how easy it will be for you to structure the information you need.

You will be able to present something tangible both to your marketing team and to other departments that may benefit from this information.

But before we explain the creation process, we are going to explain the impact that buyer persona can have on your company.

Why are buyer persona such important?
What are negative buyer persona?
How to use our buyer persona in Marketing
How to create a buyer persona
Some methods to collect information about your buyer persona:
- Where to find people to interview
  - Clients
  - Prospects
  - External Network
- Recommendations for recruiting people for interviewing:
  - Don’t use incentives.
  - Personalized interviews instead of groups.
  - Explain the purpose of the interview.
  - Make it easy.
- How many people do you have to interview to create your buyer persona?
20 questions to create your buyer persona
How do you use the results of your surveys and all the research to create your buyer persona?

Questions to create your buyer persona

1. Why are buyer persona such important?

They will help you better understand your current (and potential) customers, facilitate the creation and planning of relevant content, how you should communicate with them, how you should develop your products and what kind of services to offer according to the needs, behaviors and concerns of different groups.

It’s one thing to know who your ideal customer is, but it’s another to know what their motivations, challenges, objectives, personal and work circumstances are.

If you do your buyers well, you will be able to have this detailed view of their biographical, demographic, circumstantial and psychological profile.

The most useful buyers are those who are based on the research of information you have available and with real data of your current and potential customers.

Depending on your business you may have one or two buyers, or up to 20 people. But if you are new to this start with less and then you can add more.

2. What are negative buyer persona?

While the buyer persona is a representation of your ideal client, a negative or ‘excluding’ one – is the representation of someone you don’t want to be your client.

This can include professionals who are very advanced for your product or service, students who consume your information for the sole purpose of learning, or those potential customers who have too high an acquisition cost. (Whether it’s the price, the likelihood that they’ll stop using your product, or they’re not recurring customers).

3. How to use our buyer persona in Marketing

As mentioned before it will help you create and plan content that is interesting and relevant to your target audience.

It allows you to personalize your message according to the different segments of your audience.

For example, instead of sending a lead tracking email to your entire database, you can segment it by your buyers and personalize the message based on what you know about each of them.

If you combine this with what you know about the customer’s life cycle (i.e. where they are in their purchase cycle) you can create a content map to define specific and personalized content.

If you also create negative buyers, you will have the advantage of segmenting that group to exclude them from your campaigns, thus reducing your average acquisition cost.

4. How to create a buyer persona

As mentioned above, the most useful buyers are those who are created from real data research, through surveys, interviews and relevant information.

You should include your current and potential customers, prospects and also contacts that are outside your database that will help you enrich this exercise.

5. Some methods to collect information about your buyer persona:

Analyze your database to see if you can see trends in how certain customer leads consume information.

If you use forms on your website, include questions that capture key information to understand your buyer persona.

For example if the size of the company is important, job position, what tools do you use…etc.

Your sales and service team are the ones that really face the customer. Their experience and knowledge of customers will give you a more informed representation.

Interview current and potential customers, either by phone or in person to find out what they like (or dislike) about your product/service, motivations, challenges, where they consume and learn on the internet…etc.